Skimlinks around the world… Meet Arthur Malkoun

Welcome to our Employee Spotlight series where we get to know Skimlinks employees from around the globe a bit better. 

This time we feature Arthur Malkoun who works as a Merchant Development Manager for the Australian market.

Hi Arthur, let’s start with you telling us a bit about yourself…

I can tell you a bit, that’s actually the perfect amount to ask. I am married with 2 kids and for the past 16.5 years, I’ve worked in bookselling. The last 6.5 years of that were at Booktopia and I was managing the affiliate program there. One of my key responsibilities was to grow our relationships with authors and influencers, so I got to meet a lot of great authors as well as publishers along the way. 

Great, and what has been the highlight of your week so far?

I got to attend my first in-person event since pre-covid, with the Commission Factory, which was really cool!

When and why did you join Skimlinks?

I joined Skimlinks about 6 weeks ago now. As to why I joined, as I mentioned I had been working in the affiliate industry on the merchant side for a while and Skimlinks was one of the companies we worked with at Booktopia. I always thought highly of Skimlinks as a company and when the role came up I thought it was the perfect opportunity to be on the other side of the affiliate space. This was a rare opportunity where I could enhance and utilise my knowledge of the industry. 

What will your role be in the Australian market? 

I am the Merchant Development Manager for the Australian market, so my role is primarily to help our merchants grow revenue and leverage their opportunities and exposure with our key publishers. This will hopefully help both publishers and merchants to reap their full potential.

What do you think is the biggest challenge facing the Australian market right now? 

Well globally at the moment, the rising inflation levels have been affecting all of us, as well as many aspects of the retail space. It is certainly a concerning time and people are going to be thinking hard about where they are spending their budget, so it will a more competitive landscape than it has been in the past 5 years. 

What do you believe is the biggest opportunity in the Australian market now?

The biggest opportunity, especially coming out of covid, I believe is to really see more brands and publishers utilising QR codes as part of affiliate marketing, but also wider marketing strategies in general. We have all got very used to the concept of QR codes as part of the covid routine, so there is an exciting opportunity to utilise outdoor advertising and print publications to bring the customer back online. As we see footfall in retail starting to pick up again as restrictions have eased, this will allow us to develop a hybrid retail experience. If brands are already considering this tool, I think they should be. 

Where do you want Skimlinks to be in your region in a year’s time? 

Skimlinks is one of the best-kept secrets in the affiliate marketing space in Australia right now. I want to continue and amplify the growth we have seen out here over the last few years. As our Australian team continues to grow, we have the scope to become a more premier destination for brands looking to utilise affiliate marketing within the content space. There are a lot of people who still don’t know how useful our technology is, so bringing Skimlinks out of the shadows in this region is the goal. 

What’s the best career lesson you’ve learned so far?

Don’t be afraid to take the chance or assume you won’t get the results you want. If you don’t put yourself out there and try, you’ll never know and you might have walked away with something you weren’t expecting. To use a cliché, you have to be in it to win it.

And let’s finish with your favourite idiom…

‘Back to the drawing board.’ I use this probably the most frequently out of the idioms, it’s a good phrase if you’re stuck and need to reset or refresh.

Skimlinks is hiring now across all teams.